At TechCamp Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which took place in October 2012, activists and civil society organizations from the Balkans region discussed how to use technology for accountability. Mobile was a popular session topic, as many of the social activists were intrigued to think about how to tackle the tradeoffs in using mobile to achieve their goals. It was also an opportunity to exchange experiences, inspiration and ideas. Civil society organizations are figuring out how to invite citizens to become eyes and ears for their community and to gather more data which can be used to hold decision makers to account.  Through interaction with the media, social media, online forums referendums, petitions and meetings with MPs, participants shared how citizens are being offered increasing opportunities to take part in discussions which affect them.

 

Potential Benefits and Limitations of using mobile

 

There was concern, however, that the initial choice of platform on which to communicate with people about governmental processes can limit the audience who is able to contribute, often because of educational and financial barriers to access.  When attempting to reach a wide audience, mobile is the most distributed, widely used, communication tool in the world and has the promise to open up inclusive government processes. This is why Tech Camp participants identified the huge interactive potential as a personal way of reaching people. With widespread mobile penetration in the Balkans, there is opportunity to use the tools already in people’s pockets to receive input regarding projects promoting transparency, accountability and citizen participation.  The conversations we had in Sarajevo made it obvious, however, that this must come with a warning that the design of these projects needs considerable thought. 

 

From the outset, Tech Camp participants brainstormed problems which could be solved using phones, and ideas flowed easily. We developed a huge list of 20-30 concepts which had potential to be supported using mobile, including education, interaction with the media, job opportunities and advocacy campaigns. During our discussion, critical questions about project planning emerged. When is technology necessary? Are there times when a simple pen and paper might suffice? If mobiles are necessary, how do organizations collect people’s phone numbers? What would incentivize an individual to engage on any particular issue? How will people trust organizations to offer verified, robust information? In answering these questions, the group brought a critical lens toward mobile – a healthy scepticism about when the use of the mobile technology would be needed, or when more traditional means would be more useful to a given audience.

 

From this foundation, break-off teams were able to build more robust design into projects using technology, considering solutions to the potential pitfalls that had been identified previously. The participants started listing unique characteristics that made mobile suited to particular projects, or when it was most appropriate. For example, it's the importance of immediacy in receiving a job alert which makes it precisely the kind of information that someone looking for work would want to receive via SMS, without considering such a notification as spam.

 

A theme which emerged was that while mobile services can be automated to allow efficiency savings (e.g. automatic relies or pre-recorded interactive voice response messages), project design must not neglect the need for human resources and allow for the possibility that people will ask questions that can only be answered through personal, human interaction. This shows the need to factor expectations into design, especially when tackling accountability as it is very hard to prove causal links about how your data will be verified and taken seriously by government, let alone have impact on policy. The ability to make change may be an incentive for citizens to participate in a project, especially if they experience feedback on how their engagement can make a difference, but this can be difficult to prove so projects may have to consider other ways to promote engagement.

 

Another consideration was that SMS only has a short 160 characters space for text. This is another reason why mobile can be double edged sword, as on one hand a text message offers a bite sized snippet which may be easy for recipients to digest, on the other there is little room to grab attention and prompt certain behaviour. This is why it is often important to make space for multichannel approach – asking are there ways to use radio, TV, newsletters or face-to-face meetings to complement messaging?

 

 

How to use the mobile sword wisely

At FrontlineSMS, we often see people conceiving of mobile as a solution without fully identifying what the problem in. In our sessions, the groups did an excellent job of determining when mobile technology would support the overall goals of advocacy campaigns, educational outreach efforts, or service provision. The group recognised how technology is a small, but fully integrated, part of a broader goal.

 

For Tech Camp participants, the main take away was to consider ways mobile can be a double edged sword, offering potential benefits as well as challenges. The question is how to ensure use the effective side of the mobile ‘sword’ through appropriate application.  When exploring ways to empower citizens' participation in governance processes by harnessing the accessibility and ubiquity of mobile phones, this means ensuring not to focus on the technology itself and spend more time on citizens’ needs, behaviors and communication preferences, while contextualizing a communication strategy in effective program design.

 

The picture from TechCamp has been taken from the community boost_r FLICKR stream where it is published under the CC BY NC SA licence.

The picture of the mobile phone was taken from the Open Clip Art Gallery and belongs to the public domain.